Even as CIOs enter their third generation of IT services deals, misconceptions persist about the practice of IT outsourcing. Worse, new illusions have begun to emerge as outsourcing approaches have evolved. Achieving desired outcomes when working with third-party providers depends on clear-eyed understanding of...

As IT organizations become more strategic, so too do their partnerships with IT outsourcing providers. Digital transformation, automation, and the data revolution are not just shaking up how IT operates, they are greatly impacting the kind - and quality - of services under contract with IT outsourcing firms. Here is a look at the...

While the IT and business process services industry continued to grow through 2016, that growth slowed over the course of the year and could fall to less than 2 percent by 2019, according to a recent report from IT and business sourcing consultancy and research firm Everest Group. The pace of year-on-year revenue growth fell from...

"As if managing complex technology projects wasn't difficult enough, outsourcing can create numerous stresses you likely have not experienced when using a primarily or exclusively internal team," says Tom Fountain, CTO of...

Of American micro and small businesses that sell on eBay, 97 percent export. Small online sellers are the new face of world trade. Export credit agencies must learn to support them, writes Kati Suominen, founder and chairwoman of the Trade Capital Fund. A glance at global trade flows reveals a stunning fact:...

People are finally waking up to the fact that freelancing is a better option than fighting the daily 9-to-5 rat race. The flexibility, independence and opportunity to make more money are just a couple of reasons why people are opting to become freelancers. But...

I have read and heard a lot about 3D printing over the last two years, but it wasn't until I visited Jabil's Blue Sky Center in San Jose, California, that I realized how 3D Printing is driving the transformation of digital manufacturing. 3D Printing accelerates the process from ideation to production. The traditional approach to...

For the fourth consecutive year, reshoring of manufacturing operations to the United States in 2015 failed to keep up with continued offshoring of factory output. In fact, an index compiled by A.T. Kearney showed the largest year-over-year decrease in reshoring-vs.-offshoring in the last 10 years. As 2016 dawns,...

A growing number of US companies are set to save hundreds of millions of dollars in tax by relocating to Europe after completing takeovers of Europeon firm, according to a report in the Financial Times. Some of the biggest mergers and acquisitions so far in 2013 have involved so-called "tax inversions" - where a US acquirer shifts overseas, to Europe in particular, to pay a lower rate. These deals have come at a time when politicians in Washington have been increasing their calls for corporate tax reform. The FT report went further in detailing companies making use of tax inversion:...

Outsourcing contact centers seems to be a norm in businesses regardless of industry. But as we are all aware, outsourcing your calling agents can lead to some trade-offs. That's where the possibility of an in-house contact center comes in. An in-house contact center can...

Last month, China witnessed an historic moment - but not one that's an obvious cause for celebration. When it failed to meet interest payments on its bonds, Shanghai Chaori Solar Energy became China's first domestic corporate bond default. Soon after, Shanxi Haixin Iron and Steel Group Co., Ltd., defaulted on bank loans. The defaults should not have come as a surprise, since both companies operate in industries suffering from overcapacity. But in a country where the government often steps in to keep economic enterprises in key sectors afloat,...

What if I told you that there was a secret super power lurking in out-of-the-way places across America? A foundational technology so profound that it came into use more than 30,000 years ago as a method of providing shelter, protecting us from the elements, helping us express our dreams, share across cultures, build economic might, and even contribute to the invention of computing itself. What if I told you that we used to be the leaders of the world in exploring the boundaries of its potential but that now we export 95% of that work to other regions? What is this mostly invisible, largely forgotten or written off part of our economy that used to provide more than one in ten jobs in the USA? And more importantly, how can we turn it back into a super power as we head into the 21 century and reweave the fabric of our economy?...

Dramatic shifts in cost competitiveness around the world over the past decade are starting to spur a number of companies to change their global sourcing and manufacturing investment strategies, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The report, titled The Shifting Economics of Global Manufacturing: How Cost Competitiveness Is Changing Worldwide, is being released today. Global automakers are expanding production in the UK, for example, which has emerged as one of Western Europe's lowest-cost manufacturing locations, while at the same time they are slashing capacity in Australia, now one of the most expensive. In Mexico,...

Too few corporate leaders are thinking about how the next generation of robotics will affect their workforce, operations, business models, and competitive position, experts say. The rise of robotics is gaining traction much faster than most executives realize and will have a major impact on the competitiveness of companies and countries alike, according to new research by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Spending on robots worldwide is expected to...

Microsoft will begin nagging customers of April 8 end-of-support with on-screen messages. Reacting to criticism from customers that upgrading from Windows XP was "impossible," Microsoft today announced it would give away a limited migration tool to help people move to a newer operating system. The tool,...

As we reflect on the lessons learned through the data boom of 2013, we anticipate that in the coming year continued data growth will force enterprise organizations to rethink how to securely capture, store and retrieve data to derive more value from it. The amount of information being created by Internet-enabled devices and an increase in the number of business-critical applications being virtualized will contribute to this growth and...